Now revenue per available room at Marriott and Host will probably grow 5 to 7 percent, according to the companies and analysts, as a weakening economy cools spending and growth. Marriott officials stress such gains would still beat inflation. …

“You will have an abatement of the really large increases, but you are still going to have increases, so that’s good,” said Fred Malek, the co-chairman of Thayer Lodging, which owns several Marriott hotels, including one in Annapolis.

“The days of easy money — buying something with a lot of leverage and flipping it in 18 months — are over,” said Frederick Malek, founder of Thayer Capital, a private-equity firm in the District.

There is still good money to be made in private equity through purchases at more prudent values, more conservative leverage, and building market share and profits over time. This is the old fashioned way that we have always embraced and is bases on the time proven premise that if you can improve a company’s performance, you can earn a good return.

Both articles are worth the whole read. And here’s the photo the Post ran:

The questions are everywhere these days: What’s going on with the stock market? Why the wild swings? And more specifically, what’s causing all the turmoil in the financial and credit worlds, and what are the solutions?

I’ll be blogging my thoughts about these important issues more in the coming days and weeks, but for now I wanted to share with you the angle I take in today’s Washington Post business section. The question here is how the rockiness specifically affects the Washington DC financial community.

Frederic V. Malek, who was a senior adviser to Carlyle from 1989 to 1991 and then founded Thayer Capital, said the effect on Washington would be less severe than on other financial centers.

“The Washington area has been generally resistant to large swings because of the stability of government employment and spending,” Malek said. “This is likely to settle down in the coming weeks or months. And I suspect that this will have a lesser effect in Washington than in the rest of the country.”